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Ten thousand wild camels to be killed by snipers in Australia

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Ten thousand wild camels to be killed by snipers in Australia

Snipers will shoot from helicopters 10,000 wild camels in Australia, because of the threat posed to populations by these animals which, due to the drought, are approaching more and more localities in the interior of the country to find water.

Local officials in the state of South Australia say “extremely large” herds, in search of water and food, threaten the reserves of these villages, in addition to causing damage and posing a danger to them. motorists.

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The huge island continent experienced its warmest and driest year in 2019, which not only led to dramatic forest fires that still rage in some regions but also water shortages in many places.

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This five-day slaughter campaign will be carried out in the territories of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY), a large area of local government (LGA) managed by aborigines in the far north-west of South Australia. It is the first operation of its kind in this state.

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“These herds are exerting pressure from the dromedaries’ water on the aboriginal localities of the APY territories and pastoral activities”, explained in a press release the executive committee of the APY territories.
Without natural predator

The state’s environment ministry, which supports the slaughter, said the drought also posed “serious animal welfare issues” as many animals died of thirst or injured themselves while rushing towards water points.

Camels were brought to  Australia in the 1840s by settlers, who used them for exploration or to transport goods and goods, before the construction of railway lines.

About 20,000 animals were imported from India in about sixty years. Evolving in freedom in the hinterland (Outback) and without the natural predator, they have reproduced and are considered as a pest that contaminates water sources and endangers fragile areas as well as flora and fauna native.

 Australia is now believed to be the country with the largest population of wild dromedaries in the world, with some official estimates of one million animals in the desert areas of the center.

In the territories of the APY, residents have long lived by collecting and reselling these wild animals. But this task has become impossible because of the number of dromedaries which gather towards the rare water points because of the drought, according to the ministry.

Hence the decision to delete 10,000. The public broadcaster ABC reports that the dromedaries would be killed far from the villages and that their corpses would be burned. The number of dromedaries has fluctuated over the decades. Estimated at one million in the 2000s, the population had decreased by a quarter at the end of this decade due to the drought which had dried up several water points.

The authorities had set up in 2009 a program to manage wild dromedaries and the population had been reduced in 2013 to 300,000 individuals, after massive culls carried out, already, from helicopters, on an area of more than three million km2.

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